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No disagreement with that whatsoever. Back to the start menu for a moment, it does all that it does for people, "within" the work area (the desktop). Not beside it (or IMO, on top of it.) A lot of people find that efficient and/or preferable. Microsoft has taken that away, to suit their needs. Those users can get away with skipping 8, but I doubt they can skip 9. There most likely will be apps for 9 that won't run on 7. Just accept that as a fact for some users and you will understand why some of them are not happy.

When a for-profit company has a monopoly, for all intents and purposes, of desktop computing, any unilateral change they decide to make will have financial ramifications throughout the economy and with millions of users and organizations. In fact, a great conversation (though probably not one for Neowin) is whether or not it is healthy for one company to have that much influence over the economy and information workforce. With such a radical change Microsoft has created years of revenue stream from upgrades, to re-certifications, to training/trainers, IT worker skillsets (goes with certifications), etc. etc.

If Microsoft does this again, many, many, people and organizations will actually have that conversation. During MS' DOJ oversight period, this topic was discussed here and there. This will be very interesting to watch. Blue and 9 will be very, very important.

personally I found the whole "the start menu is jarring and break my workflow" argument a bit of a stretch and somewhat hyperbolic. if you're actually working on something all your apps are up and running anyway. that aside though, it's their right to not like metro on a personal level or like the style. on a purely effective level though, none of them have really given an effective argument for making Metro less efficient than the start menu. with one small exception, the three people in the world who actually use the "jump" lists in the start menu good idea, but technically it didn't work very well and wasn't used by anyone but a small handful and even then it was only useful in a very few situations, unfortunately we can't make a GUI that's perfect for all the small situations but have to make one that's effective in the bigger pictures and where it's used mostly, and if that means sacrificing some of the niche features, then that's what has to be done.

Luckily Windows 8 doesn't require much in the retraining department, the IT guys should be able to pick it up right away, with a bit of an adjustment to their workflow. the regular users who aren't so set in the old ways are in my experience those who take the shift to the metro ways the easiest and most will be able to pick it right up after the intro tutorial "video". Up until a certain level anyway. the senior users (aged 70-75+) are in general(though not universally) very reluctant to change, mostly because they feel they don't understand computers, they don't want to understand them and they're afraid to click stuff. This is an age limit that goes up every year though, as old people get more and more technically literate, and as the generational shift gets older. a few years ago, the same switch from XP to Vista was impossible for those 50-60+. and in 2001, XP was impossible to learn for those ~50 and many in the 40 range.

of course nowadays kids come out of kindergarten with their own pads and able to code their own games in high-high level building block languages. Actually being able to run their make your game software for their 6-7 year or so old kid was the primary requirement for a customer when he bought a new laptop last year.

It will be interesting to see how much MS can do as they're out from the oversight. We're just seeing the start of it yet, and it takes time to make the massive changes they want to do and the unifying they want to do post oversight.

and I hope blue and 9 will fix a lot of the little nags and bigger nags with modern UI, though I'm happy using it as a launcher and for stuff like Netflix, and tune in and other background stuff. heck once someone makes a decent irc app that can show multiple channels in side dock mode, I'll even use that. but there's little stuff, like when I set up the computer for an old guy(yeah we're talking past the 75+ here ) on Friday, it annoyed me that I couldn't pin a shortcut to desktop IE easily in the start menu, even start iexplore didn't work, I had to specifically state iexplore.exe then I was able to launch and pin desktop IE from metro. for most this wouldn't be a problem and it would have been better leaving him with metro IE. But Since Norways bank ID system used by pretty much all the banks here, for logging in and signing documents and transactions use java-... well desktop IE it has to be.

>>Luckily Windows 8 doesn't require much in the retraining department, the IT guys should be able to pick it up right away, with a bit of an adjustment to their workflow. the regular users who aren't so set in the old ways are in my experience those who take the shift to the metro ways the easiest and most will be able to pick it right up after the intro tutorial "video".<<

It isn't really IT Guys who have a problem. While most don't like the Modern UI, Server 2012 has generated a lot of excitement. IT Admins could care less and won't use it if they don't like it as long as they get the job done. Most are remote anyway. The training costs are the people IT guys provide a computing environment for. Their job is not to know a whole lot about PCs it is to do something with computers. And having to retrain/relearn takes away from their primary concerns. They have specific apps, data, and workflows. And whether or not it's difficult to retrain them, it will have to be done. There is a cost associated with that. Depending on the size and diversity of staff, many IT departments or the business units themselves will delay those costs as long as possible. It's really not a simple undertaking for large organizations depending on the business or organization.

Not sure we deal with too many senior users. They are in low quantity in my experience. Just never really been a factor.

>>of course nowadays kids come out of kindergarten with their own pads and able to code their own games in high-high level building block languages. Actually being able to run their make your game software for their 6-7 year or so old kid was the primary requirement for a customer when he bought a new laptop last year.<<

Not here. They come out of kindergarten playing Angry Birds on their iPads. Seriously, programming is just not that popular anymore. Really good programmers are in high demand.

I unfortunately after choosing programming as my primary for my bachelor then after that realized that, while I enjoy programming and I think in the logical way that makes programming come fairly easy and make sense to me, that I simply couldn't do it for a job. 7.5 hours a day, for 5+ days a week.

and there certainly was not an abundance of people in my "class" that chose programming, most went for tech or system dev as a distant second.

It was more popular than it has been in the past 5-10 years. Math and Science in general is on the decline in America. We just want coast through school and make a lot of money and have lots of women doing as little work as possible. Or maybe that's just me.

oh give me a break, Neowin is a google circle jerk club most of the time

Clearly you never read the front page. The only thing to ever get decent reviews are the occasional Android phone, and even then the reviewers say that the WP phones are awesomer in every way.

personally I found the whole "the start menu is jarring and break my workflow" argument a bit of a stretch and somewhat hyperbolic. if you're actually working on something all your apps are up and running anyway. that aside though, it's their right to not like metro on a personal level or like the style. on a purely effective level though, none of them have really given an effective argument for making Metro less efficient than the start menu. with one small exception, the three people in the world who actually use the "jump" lists in the start menu good idea, but technically it didn't work very well and wasn't used by anyone but a small handful and even then it was only useful in a very few situations, unfortunately we can't make a GUI that's perfect for all the small situations but have to make one that's effective in the bigger pictures and where it's used mostly, and if that means sacrificing some of the niche features, then that's what has to be done.

Have to say I admire your arrogance, but why do people have to justify themselves to you anyway? Usability is very personal to each person, the smallest things may annoy a person to the point of distraction. Whether you agree is irrelevant because it's not your computer it's theirs.

I unfortunately after choosing programming as my primary for my bachelor then after that realized that, while I enjoy programming and I think in the logical way that makes programming come fairly easy and make sense to me, that I simply couldn't do it for a job. 7.5 hours a day, for 5+ days a week.

and there certainly was not an abundance of people in my "class" that chose programming, most went for tech or system dev as a distant second.

I can barely stand to do it for homework, let alone for a living. I have a case of Advil at my desk just for this reason alone. Lol

It was more popular than it has been in the past 5-10 years. Math and Science in general is on the decline in America. We just want coast through school and make a lot of money and have lots of women doing as little work as possible. Or maybe that's just me.

While I agree that the latest offerings haven't exactly sold like hotcakes, they're far from being a sideshow. Microsoft is just way too late to the game (as always) so they're paying the price for it. Windows 8, however, is a whole other animal - you either like it or you don't.

While I agree that the latest offerings haven't exactly sold like hotcakes, they're far from being a sideshow. Microsoft is just way too late to the game (as always) so they're paying the price for it. Windows 8, however, is a whole other animal - you either like it or you don't.

Exactly, I can deal with it on my laptop - surfing, music, casual games and not much more, I went back to Windows 7 on my desktop for a few reasons.

1) I can't find a good setting for the default font that is easy to read on my monitor. 9 is too small and 10 doesn't look right. Can I change that? NO!2) The flipping animation, I hate that I have to watch it every time I go from desktop to "tablet mode" to desktop. Can I change that? NO!3) I don't like the "tablet mode" backgrounds and the solid ones are just too boring. Can I change that? NO!.... well yes if I hack the reg or install a 3rd party app.4) They made the desktop so ugly no one WANTS to see it. They say they removed transparency because or power drain, but left the task bar transparent? WTF?

Well, those are MY reasons, it was the removal of the start button or the inclusion of the start screen, I always thought that bother me. Then I counted for the last three days how many times I used the start button... ZERO... I honestly couldn't believe it. I never touched the thing, my task-bar holds everything I use daily - Firefox, Foobar, Thunderbird, uTorrent, Office shortcuts, and the desktop has all of my current games - The Mass Effect Trilogy, Solsuite, and Metro 2033 and Steam. I guess I'd love Windows 8, if I could correct those 4 nags.... the under the hood stuff I liked.